The Sex Pistols played their final gig at San Francisco's Winterland in January 1978. About a year later, Sid Vicious died from an overdose, and so did punk rock — according to the music magazines. The Pistols' chaotic tour of America, however, had dropped like a stone in a still pond, and the ripples were still spreading.

In 1979, Penelope Spheeris' day job was directing music videos for bands such as The Doobie Brothers and Fleetwood Mac, but her own tastes ran toward the fast and the hard. After work, she'd hold on to her cameras and crew and sneak off into seedy Los Angeles clubs to film the city's nascent hardcore punk scene.

The documentary that resulted in 1981, "The Decline of Western Civilization," was a jaw-dropper, especially coming in an era defined by Ronald Reagan, the "moral majority" and vapid MTV pop. Spheeris dove headfirst into a Bukowskian underworld of squalid clubs and squats, random violence and self-mutilation, where every interviewee boasted a taunting "screw you" attitude. "I really want them to hate me!" sneers Catholic Discipline singer Claude Bessy, "It makes me feel good."